Chapter 16: I didn't know
Vlad was retching blood and vomit, his hands gripping the toilet bowl with abnormal strength. He couldn't feel anything but the dry thuds of his throat each time another upsurge of bile would have him leaning down, each time the dripping of fresh blood would paint his chin red.
He wasn't sure where that blood came from.
Some of it was from inside, that much was certain – turning dark brown in his womit already – but the mirror and the reflection of his sweat-and-blood-drenched face when he'd rushed into the bathroom showed vivid crimson instead – the kind of color he'd see when his eye got to bleeding and showing him things that weren't here.
His eye wasn't doing anything weird right now.
Vlad bent over once again, and had nothing to vomit except blood and saliva. What was left of his breakfast was already clogging the toilet, but the heaving wouldn't stop, not yet.
His ears rang with a dull presence, even as someone called his name from outside the bathroom.
"Vlad, are you... Let me in, please!"
Pink-red bubbles of saliva formed on his lips as he screwed his eyelids shut.
He couldn't move away from the toilet, he couldn't walk over and reassure June, he wasn't even certain he'd stay upright if he took his knees off the tiled floor.
He wondered how long he'd been in there, that she'd come and found his bed empty, that she'd heard him heaving and retching through the door.
He didn't understand why she wouldn't enter herself – it wasn't as if there was a lock on the door – but right now it could only be for the better, couldn't it?
There were glowing threads of pink in the blood he was vomiting, and now that there was nothing else to throw up he couldn't mistake those for anything else.
ectoplasm
"Vlad, please! Let me help!"
He clumsily flushed the toilets, wiped his chin off with his arm cold cold blue he knew that color on his skin now and only managed to put blood on more parts of his body.
The mirror on the opposite wall remained where it stood, and yet Vlad couldn't ignore it.
The sink was there, just there, and he needed needed needed needed to wash his hands, to wash his face, to make it seem like he hadn't just vomited half the blood content of his body onto himself.
Gripping the sink's edge let him drag himself up and over, leaning dangerously on the wash bowl, stomach still thudding dangerously, throat wet and cutting and abused.
The mirror's eyes widened dangerously as Vlad's skin took on a blueish tint.
When he threw up once more, the image reflected at him was of a corpse with cold skin and too-fluid blood dripping down its chin.
The last of the iron-tasting liquid spluttered into the sink, and the corpse blue color receded, hiding back beneath the mask of human flesh – just where the pimples had been, small cold spots at odd with his skin tone. Finally gone but not really were they or they wouldn't or he wouldn't be turning blue as he died a little more.
The blood in the sink bubbled unnaturally, pink strands lazily washing down the ceramic bowl.
Vlad couldn't bear to think – what if June had come in while he'd been...
"looking like a ghost are we"
The mirror on the wall gave him a horror-filled look.
but it was him truly who was a horror-filling sight
pale with all the blood he'd just vomited
that blood painting his face and arm instead of dwelling within
Another voice joined June's outside the bathroom, and Vlad couldn't focus enough to tell if it was one of the doctors or someone else. It was good better at least that they weren't here with him. They couldn't see what he'd just seen and not assume...
The blood – the blood was alright. Vlad was a walking health disaster and they all knew it. Who cared if he'd thrown up more blood than could be contained in a water bottle?
he knew he was dead already
but they didn't
please don't let them find out don't let them know
no one would try to heal the dead and he'd end up alone thrown away locked up perhaps
again
The blue had left his skin now, but the rest – the rest looked worse than before. The mirror in front of him seemed more aware of the points to his teeth and ears.
Vlad couldn't tell anyone why – but this wasn't him, this wasn't what he was supposed to look like, not even with blood all over his face, and it was getting worse.
He looked like the tales of undead things that wouldn't remain in their graves.
"where do the dead belong Vladislav?"
was that what death felt like? trapped in a body unfit for life but aware? aware of the pain of the memories of death of time?
all hospitals had a morgue and that was where you put corpses
The blue started edging in again, small spots of cold where he'd had glowing acne for the past months.
green and purple hiding behind
swirling
exploding in Vlad's face burning his soul and blood and skin his entire life away
Dead fingers cracked the ceramic sink, and the corpse blue disappeared once again.
Vlad finally noticed how he'd bitten down on his lips, bleeding ever more, leaving trenches of broken skin and flesh visible. But there already was blood everywhere, of course – and then everything turned red.
The mirror's eye had started bleeding and he couldn't help but wonder was it really the usual eye was it the left one all along or.
hadn't it been the right eye before?
The door banged open, but Vlad was staring at the red, at the mirror looking at him, at the eye bleeding down his left cheek – he felt the hands prying him away from the sink, four hands, not just June, he followed as she had him sit down and neither her nor the doctor commented on the ears or the glowing blood or the teeth.
The pink seemed to shine brighter than ever before, the only other color he could reliably perceive in this sea of scarlet, and he could only wonder how both June and the doctor could miss it.
How they could not ask.
Maybe they couldn't see what he did when his eye bleed so, but that had already been visible before, hadn't it? What else could hold their attention, what else could be more important than the obvious ghostly interference?